PINEBOOK Pro suitable for audio?

[mendo]

Hello,

do you think this new device is suitable, performance-wise, for audio stuff?

• July Update: All about the Pinebook Pro
• 14″ PINEBOOK Pro LINUX LAPTOP - Specs

I would use it for DJ, some MIDI stuff in Ardour & Bitwig, maybe LMMS.
Definitely no harcore linuxsampler or DrumGizmo...

Appreciate your input if this is powerful enough or just yet another electric waste device...

the company also plans a Linux based tablet

Thanks.

[bluebell]

Since that machine has an ARM CPU it might get compared with the most powerful Raspberry Pis, so you might ask Pi users in the Raspberry Pi section.

[phi1123]

maybe, i suggest you pick up an old laptop for the same price which can handle AVlinux and its processor heavy preempt realtime kernel, along with capacity for a 1 tb ssd

[phi1123]

sorry forgot to mention, either dell or hp. lots of others just break too easily

[khz]

https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/15/pinep ... t-to-know/, https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone
( https://www.youtube.com/embed/11eObhH8M ... branding=0 )

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-linu ... g-for-150/

[mendo]

maybe, i suggest you pick up an old laptop for the same price which can handle AVlinux and its processor heavy preempt realtime kernel, along with capacity for a 1 tb ssd

Yes, that's what I actually did. I refurbished Thinkpad which will not break at the joints
But the Pinebook has this promise of the long battery live and low weights for travel.
DJing on the go or just running LMMS or alike should probably work.

[Baggypants]

I've been using a pi3 and now a pi4 as part of the Zynthian raspberry pi synth project. The Pi3 was pretty good, It ran pianoteq, linuxsampler, ZynAddSubFX, Nois3Maker. It struggled with OB-Xd and the larger SFZ files like Salamander Grand. However, the Pi4, even the 1GiB version performs flawlessly for nearly all practical purposes. OB-Xd is rock solid, CPU intensive plugins like the foo-yc20 all work perfectly.

I imagine that a laptop that is able to play the Witcher 3 https://twitter.com/kaikreuzer/status/1 ... 8993063936 ought to be fine with most of the linux audio stuff that could be thrown at it.

[ChuggnBlues]

ARM computers are not created equal. Comparing it to the Raspberry PI is a little silly. I think it should do fine with your use case.

[nilshi]

I have the PinebookPro and I can not recommend it for ProAudio. Get a 2nd hand older business notebook instead with a variety of connections.

[Baggypants]

I have the PinebookPro and I can not recommend it for ProAudio. Get a 2nd hand older business notebook instead with a variety of connections.

Why not?

[ChuggnBlues]

Why not?

I'm assuming he was saying that due to the lack of "external connections" on the device. I'm not sure how that really applies to audio, though, since most laptops do not have very good external connections for audio stuff anyway. Also, there are plenty of USB-C docks with loads of connections attached.

I had the pleasure of testing my UMC1820 on a PBP this weekend (beautiful and wonderful laptop!) and it worked just as good (if not better) than my old Lenovo Thinkpad. The latency isn't great (~11ms on lowest settings according to Ardour), but I never seem to get adequate latency settings via USB mixers - I prefer using the direct monitoring anyway.

If you're looking for low latency monitoring from your DAW, I'd recommend going with a PCIe sound card (and that probably means desktop). If you're using a USB interface with direct monitoring the PBP is more than adequate. It all comes down to your requirements & workflow.

EDIT: Also I find it funny those who are saying it doesn't have CPU power, I was running compiles crazy faster than my old x86 laptop. These modern arm chips are FAST for CPU-intensive work. Not as fast as an i7 but you are talking a laptop that can run a completely FOSS boot process that is being sold brand new in 2020 - that's the real stuff we need ATM.

[ChuggnBlues]

Also, the PBP and RockPro64 (the SBC version) have a 4x PCIe slot. I'm betting that would be a good option if you need low-latency monitoring from your DAW, with a compatible sound card.

Rigging that up with the laptop is another story, but the SBC would be perfect for that application.

[JimiPb]

If you're still interested i tried running some old reaper productions on my pi4. Since dragonfly-reverb is x64 only i had to run everything without reverb. Here are some screenshots:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tuq4bxw16uzc ... B9KVa?dl=0

Everything ran alright, until ReaTune (built in autotune) came in. Somehow that plugin killed performance like no other.

[hm11]

After using it for nearly a year I can say that the Pinebook Pro is 'suitable' for audio Production however, You'll need an audio interface because the sound device it has isn't very powerful for low-latency works, or even mixing without pops & clicks. The software support has gotten a lot better however, at this time wine isn't compiled or available in a lot of distros to emulate x86_64 vst plugins. At this time I'm using Manjaro Linux 20.something with KDE Plasma (xorg) And Cockos Reaper 6.18 (aarch64) This thing works nicely, i was able to make some short beats with the helm synth VST and some sound libraries. Give it some more time and its only going to get better, specially with how much work they put into wayland (for stutters/jitters)

[Baggypants]

Thanks for the update. I'm stuck in the limbo of waiting for the Pinebook Pro to become available again.